i'm making my peace with distance
by Aurora West
Summary: "You have to know when to let your siblings be their own people."  A series of moments from the lives of Bill, Charlie, and Percy Weasley.
1. I

Disclaimer and author's note: _Harry Potter_ is the property of JK Rowling. Title from the song 'Cautioners' by Jimmy Eat World. This was written for iloveyoumorethananything's Family and Friendship Forever! Competition on the HPFC forum.

* * *

><p><span>i'm making my peace with distance (maybe that's a big mistake)<span>

* * *

><p>Mummy is distracted by a squirmy, screaming thing and Daddy says he mustn't bother her because she's tired, because she's been working hard to bring the baby home. So far Bill doesn't think much of this baby. It's noisy and doesn't do anything except keep Mummy in bed. Gran came to make dinner last night and she's just as interested in the baby, but she's gone home now to tell Uncle Gid and Uncle Fab about it.<p>

When Daddy asks him if he wants to see the baby, Bill shakes his head and waddles away. He doesn't want anything to do with it, not when everyone loves it so much and forgets about him. But then Daddy catches him in his arms and swings him up in the air and holds him up, face to face with the baby, and he says, "This is your brother, Billy. This is your brother Charlie."

Mummy holds the baby, Charlie, out for Bill to see better. Charlie's eyes are screwed shut and he's finally quiet and sleeping. Fuzz that reminds Bill of his puffskein toy covers his head. Then his eyes open and the baby looks straight at him with blueish-grey eyes, and he waves a little fist in the air. Bill reaches out and touches the fist softly, and Charlie's fingers unclench and then re-clench around Bill's hand.

He can't help but be won over. Bill hasn't ever seen a baby before, but he decides that this baby, probably, is the best one that there is.


	2. II

Charlie's favourite time of the week is when Mum does the laundry. She puts the babies on a fresh pile of towels and they squirm and gurgle and he doesn't understand them really; he can't remember Percy being a baby even though he guesses he was as little as the twins once. They just don't _do_ anything, or seem good for much, really. Percy, at least, can walk – he waddles round the stacks of clothes; falls on them sometimes with a plop that makes Charlie laugh and Bill smirk.

Bill wants to go outside and play but Mum won't let them out alone; there's something scary out there, something scary enough that it makes Mum and Dad whisper like Charlie does when he's scared at night of the ghoul and wants to wake Bill up. Whatever it is makes Mum cry whenever Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian come to dinner, when they leave and she hugs them and won't let go until Dad makes her.

Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian aren't scared of the monster. Charlie wants to be like them someday, not scared of anything. Bill does too; sometimes the two of them play at fighting monsters; and sometimes they decide the monster's a dragon and Charlie will be the dragon. Percy tries to join in but Bill says he has to be the one to get eaten, and Charlie roars as loud as he can and then Percy runs away. Anyway he's too little to play with them, really.

But now no one's crying, no one's left out or scared of monsters. They're all there, Bill, and Percy, and Fred and George, and Charlie, in the warm yellow sun shining through the thick-paned window, surrounded by the smell of fresh-dried clothes, and life is perfect and Charlie can't imagine how it ever wouldn't be.


	3. III

Bill and Charlie take charge and chivvy the rest of their brothers away after Mum collapses in the kitchen. They were all outside – Bill and Charlie playing Quidditch, Fred and George watching eagerly, Percy forced out into the sun but sitting in the grass reading – and all under Mum's watchful eye when a silvery glow filled the kitchen. The two of them land at once, their Quaffle falling, forgotten, on a garden gnome's head, and then they hear Mum give a strangled cry and she covers her face with her hands and falls to the ground.

Bill goes inside instantly but comes out quickly, looking pale. "Let's go upstairs," he says shortly, and Charlie grabs the twins' hands. Percy looks a little frightened and starts to ask what's wrong, but Bill only shakes his head and says, "C'mon."

They slip inside and past Mum, who is sobbing on the floor, and go up the stairs to the room that Bill and Charlie share. Percy opens his book but doesn't look down at the page. The twins, for once, are quiet. Charlie checks on Ron and Ginny – both of them are still napping, Ron's thumb stuck in his mouth and Ginny looking peaceful. Bill goes back downstairs to talk to Mum, but reappears within minutes, still pale. Eventually Charlie thinks to Floo Dad, and Bill says he'll do it.

They find out later that Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian are dead.


	4. IV

Bill is all poise when he gets the envelope bearing his Hogwarts school list and his shining Prefect badge. He expects it, Percy realises; he isn't remotely surprised. Mum's so proud, so very proud; she insists that she'll get him a gift, whatever he wants. Charlie mutters that it's too bad the Brazilian pen-friend already sent the cursed hat or the gift could've been to visit São Paolo. The twins protest that the cursed hat was brilliant and it'd be terrible if it'd never been sent. Mum's been looking for it; Bill says it probably just got lost, but Percy suspects the twins have taken it, and the conspiratorial look on Charlie's face when he glances at them as good as confirms it. They'd never let Percy in on it, though, even if he wanted to be, which he doesn't.

When Bill isn't looking once, Percy picks up the badge and studies it, turning it this way and that so that it catches the warm yellow sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window. So what if Fred and George and Charlie leave him out – he realises that what he wants is a badge like this, and he'll never get it nicking cursed hats and testing every boundary Mum and Dad set, like the twins, or capturing pixies and gnomes in the garden and coming home at Christmas with half his hair singed off like Charlie.

Percy won't start Hogwarts for another year but he vows, while he holds Bill's scarlet-and-gold badge in his hand, that he'll have one of his own someday.


	5. V

Oliver Wood and Percy get on their first year. They're friends, even, because the other boys that they share their dormitory with are neighbours of some sort outside Hogwarts, or cousins; Percy's not quite sure but anyway they've already got their own friendship, so that leaves Percy and Oliver. They aren't anything alike; Oliver's practically twitching with anticipation at making the House team next year and Percy, well Percy's just trying not to be Bill-and-Charlie-Weasley's-little-brother. He's not interested in Quidditch; he's never been good on a broom and when the twins could outfly him by the time they were seven, Bill and Charlie stopped making him play. He gets good marks, though, he's top of his class, and maybe that's something.

But then second year comes round and Bill's Head Boy, and there's Quidditch trials, and then Oliver's another part of Charlie's collection, and Percy becomes Bill-and-Charlie-Weasley's-little-brother again.

It's the first time he thinks maybe he could do without his family.


	6. VI

They have lost one of their little brothers and Percy knows that all of them, all three of them, Bill, Charlie, and him, feel as though they've failed at something, failed the duty that none of them _chose_ for themselves, because you didn't choose to be an older brother; it was pushed on you and then you never cared that you didn't choose it. But none of them feel it as much as he does, because he was there, he was _there_, and he couldn't stop it happening, and now Fred is dead and George looks glassy and exhausted and defeated and broken and Percy's afraid that they've lost him too, even though he never gave up; he fought to the very end, defeated Yaxley and helped clean up until Dad said they all needed to go home.

When they all return to the Burrow, Bill follows Percy up the stairs to his room. Percy can't even think about how it's the first time he's been back in years; the first time he's climbed that narrow staircase since he was nineteen years old. What a fool he'd been; what a young, abysmally stupid _child_. They could have died, all of them, and now one of them has, and he—

"Perce," Bill says, as Percy sits down on his old bed. He hasn't bothered shutting the door. Anyway, there isn't much point, as Bill always excelled at getting through locked doors.

For a second, Percy doesn't answer, but then he glances at his eldest brother. Bill's eyes are red but he's not crying currently; Percy doesn't think he is either and then can't remember if he has; his eyes feel dry and sandy. He expects Bill to say something; but Bill, his older brother who's always been cool and in charge, always known what to do and what to say, seems at a loss for words. So Percy says, "Sorry I missed your wedding. It sounded—really nice."

Really he's in no position to say that, as he's not heard anything about the wedding besides the fact that it was disrupted by 'Ministry officials' – his name for them then, though he calls them Death Eaters now, of course. He was sick with fear for his family before he could think twice about it. Umbridge asked him what the problem was and he stuttered that he must've had something bad in the canteen for dinner.

Bill looks slightly incredulous and Percy immediately feels stupid; but he'd much rather picture Bill's and Fleur's wedding than remember what Fred looked like, still and white and _laughing_, for once not _at_ Percy, but with him… Then Bill speaks in a low voice. "You'd better not be blaming yourself, Perce."

Percy looks away and grimaces. "Aren't you?"

There's a long silence. And then, "Of course I am." When Percy meets Bill's eyes again through glasses smudged with dirt and blood, Bill sighs. "But just because we both are doesn't mean we should be."

Percy knows what Bill's going to say because he's already had some of it from George when he tried to speak with his younger brother. "We're in the Order," George said flatly; "We knew what might happen." As though that makes it better for anyone. Charlie, who was close enough to hear, mumbled, "Leave him for now," as George moved off across the Great Hall.

With another sigh, Bill sits down on the bed. The springs creak as the mattress sags. "Look, I can blame myself for being the oldest. Charlie can blame himself for being the toughest of us. You—well."

Percy wonders what Bill thinks he can blame himself for and appreciates, in a way, that he doesn't want to say it, but this is part of it to him. "I can blame myself for betraying all of you."

"Not when it really mattered," Bill replies evenly. With a shrug, Percy looks away. "Perce, I'm serious." His oldest brother puts a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not going to say I know how you're feeling, because that's trite. I just—I mean, look, I don't think it's really sunk in for any of us yet, but I have to think…no, I _know_ that Fred didn't think he needed protecting. He had as much stake in fighting as any of us. And I think all he'd care about was that he'd a hand in bringing down Voldemort." Bill takes a deep, shaky breath. "And I know it doesn't make either of us feel better. But I think––that's part of being an older brother. You have to know when to let your siblings be their own people, even if––" He stops and swallows hard and doesn't go on.

The two of them sit in silence for a long time. The house is mostly quiet – a low murmur that might be crying is coming from somewhere and there's faint birdsong from outside, but other than that, there's no sound. Warm yellow sun shines through Percy's east-facing window, the same sun that's always illuminated the house. Nothing's changed, and yet everything has. And his brother hasn't said what Percy expected him to because he knows that isn't what he needs to hear.

Finally, Bill pats Percy on the shoulder and stands up heavily. He walks to the door, still without saying a word, but then he hesitates and turns around. They meet each other's eyes and Bill says, like he's continuing an earlier conversation, even though Percy doesn't think it's one they were having, "But Perce, if you feel like you need a big brother...well, you know where to find me."

Percy tries to respond but finds that his throat has closed entirely and won't let him make a sound, so instead he just nods.

He's glad, despite all of it, that he's home.


End file.
